


Stark Industries Is A Real Place

by mediaboy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Intern Peter Parker
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26978077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediaboy/pseuds/mediaboy
Summary: Stark Industries is the world's leading engineering firm, researching and developing technology in almost every field of human existence - apart from weaponry, and everyone knows why that is. For some reason, there's a kid running round. Goes by Parker, Peter Parker. He's got a badge, he probably works here, the system says he's an intern. As far as everyone is concerned, that's all there is to it. Alas, Peter Parker is blissfully unaware that he has somehow gained thousands of colleagues. Sure, he signed the paperwork... but since when did Mr Stark explain things?
Comments: 13
Kudos: 248





	1. Anne Hertberger, Software & Firmware

Working at Stark Industries was little more than a dream for most people. The leading light of multiple scientific fields, funded by one of the richest and most powerful individuals in the world, with  _ the  _ icon for female empowerment as a CEO.

For Anne Hertberger it was a nine to five.

She liked the benefits - the cafeteria was great, and the perks rivalled what most of her fellow compsci graduates had at the silicon valley conglomerates - but it was, for all of those many small differences, just another job.

She couldn't deny that Stark Industries was a little different to the competition though. They were innovators. Creators. Some might even call them dreamers, or visionaries. She called them workers. Drones. Employees.

Dr Hertberger was the senior manager of the software/firmware division of Stark Industries. She worked with lab managers and science advisors and consultants and every other cog in the wheel to make sure that the wheel was moving in the right direction.

A visionary might say the direction was progress.

Anne was a cynic. The direction was profits. She couldn't complain about capitalism when it kept food on the table, her kid in school, and gas in the car.

There were definitely differences here. A certain mental flexibility was required, and as long as she maintained it she had a cushy job with a genuinely ethical firm and a boss that was a genuine mentor for her professional career.

When her office roomba started growling at her one morning her immediate reaction was therefore not to panic. Panic at the unexpected was a frame of mind that you abandoned along with your sanity after a few months of Stark Industries company culture (and hadn't she heard about the great Afghanistan purge during her indoctrina- her orientation?) and frankly? A growling roomba was not that terrifying.

When it started prowling towards her feet, she stared at it, unimpressed. And when it rushed towards her, she simply raised her feet and let it crash into the wall behind her. 

Tuesdays. What an annoyance.

Her sensible workshoes lightly applied pressure the next time it raced towards her, trapping the whining robot for her examination. It was definitely her roomba. She had customised it with googly eyes and racing stripes. But it wasn't doing the roomba thing of sitting patiently in its charging dock. Peculiar.

Keeping one foot lightly on top of the roomba she tapped her keyboard a few times to bring up her remote diagnostics problem and paused for a second. Someone had pushed a firmware update to every roomba on-site. That was not expected. Or permitted. She would have had to sign off on any such change as part of the standard security protocols. Frowning, she pulled out the updated firmware from the remote server it had been delivered from and started picking the code to pieces. 

It took her six minutes to realise three things. Firstly, it wasn't so much of an update as a complete overall. Secondly, that the exact details of what was going on were well beyond her expertise. She hadn't seen anything quite like this since Tony asked her to run diagnostics on his lab robots. Thirdly, whichever lab Peter Parker worked in was going to be getting some mandatory retraining. There were some really quite serious flaws in the update. Anyone could manipulate the code and push a new update! In fact she could quite easily reset the firmware to the original code that they all came with.

But did she want to? Anne frowned as she scanned through the code. The exact mechanics were beyond her, and there wasn't a comment to be found in the coding anywhere, but the general gist was that someone had given her roomba a desire to work. She glanced around the immaculate office: it was worth a try wasn't it?

She pulled her electric pencil sharpener across the desk and carefully emptied the shavings all over the floor.

The pitiful whining stopped almost immediately. The chirps coming from the roomba under her feet almost sounded… hopeful.

Well then.

She lifted her foot and watched as the roomba zoomed towards the mess. It span in little circles as it hovered up every last crumb, before rushing back towards her. It paused at the edge of her chair, and made little rumbling noises. Purring? She quirked an eyebrow. Peter Parker was a mad man. But one that she wouldn't entirely eviscerate. What nerd didn't want a pet robot?

Forty-seven minutes later, she hit compile on her code and leaned back in satisfaction. A little cleaning up of their code, a few small additions, a connection back to the FRIDAY mainframe that ran the tower for camera integration and workload balancing and the entire thing was ready to go. Firmware upgrades, done. Mandatory retraining, organised. Coffee, in need of replenishment.

There was a knock at the door, and a teenager stuck their head around the door. Which didn't compute for a second, but then Anne shrugged. This was the fifty-second floor. Anyone able to get this high was probably an employee. 

"Hey miss! Do you have a roomba in here? Mr Stark has sent me to find them all!"

Her eyes went down to the roomba that was excitedly roving around the room looking for the pencil shavings she'd thrown aimlessly around, and then back to the teenager at the door.

"And why do you need my roomba?" He flushed bright red and Anne grinned, "Did you happen to decide to upgrade a few of them?"

He positively glowed with embarrassment.

She let it hang there for a minute, before deciding to save him. "I've fixed it. This one time only. No security problem, no gaping hole in tower defences, and some inefficiencies fixed."

His mouth worked emptily for a second, and a slight keening came from him, like a kettle about to explode. Which reminded her. Coffee.

"So you're an intern or something right?" She waved the cup in his general direction, "Think you could make me a coffee whilst I finish patching the roombas?"

He grabbed it and vanished in an instance, and she finally let her grin stretch across her face. That was, presumably, one Peter Parker. Precocious little shit, if the programming was anything to go by. And he worked with Tony….well. She added a few more modules of mandatory retraining onto his lab. Some basic lab safety. Some human resources administration things. One on human relationships. An email to Pepper and the entire thing would be signed off on before Tony could get wind of it.

Oh no. How terrible. Their owner forced into mandatory training courses because one of his lab interns screwed up. How awful. Where was her tiny violin? Serves him right for dumping Charles on her. Who wanted to have Charles as a subordinate? Pah!

The patch was just finishing when the cup of coffee arrived, borne in the hands of the very interesting young man. "Here you go ma'am! FRIDAY told me your usual!"

She sipped it contemplatively, as she watched the progress bar tick to 100%. And made a decision: "Kid. When you decide to do this again, you're doing it in one of my labs. Clear?" His embarrassed face turned to one of shocked delight and he had just started to babble when he levelled a look at him. The parent look, carefully sharpened on her own kids. He shut up. "And you will complete the training courses you've been booked onto before you do so. The details are in your Stark email."

"I have a Stark email?!" 

"...you're a registered employee. Peter Parker, intern." She frowned, "Did you miss orientation?"

"I'm- ah. A special case! Yeah, that's right! Mr Stark hired me directly. He saw me at a- at a science fair! Where my proje-"

She sighed. "Floor thirty. Look for Claire. She's supposed to handle intern orientation."

"How do I get there?"

Anne's eyebrows raised again as FRIDAY's voice spoke out of the kid's back pocket, "Allow me to assist you Peter. Dr Hertberger has a meeting with Ms Potts in five minutes."

She did? Anne glanced at her calendar, previously blissfully blank, and blinked. Huh. She did.

"Thank you ma'am! Thank you FRIDAY! I'll just..go do that now!"

He was gone in the blink of an eye. Teenagers. 

She yawned. A meeting with the CEO before 10am. What a day.

Her eyes caught the roomba hoovering up the last crumbs in her office.

….could you program a roomba to play fetch?

  
  


_ MEMO: HERTBERGER TO TOWER STAFF _

_ SUBJECT: DON'T FORGET TO FEED YOUR ROOMBA  _

_ The observant amongst you will have noticed some changes to the tower cleaning robots. Please do not be alarmed. It is not the first stage in a robot uprising. An intern project escaped the lab and gifted us with sentient roombas. _

_ Let me know what you’ve named them so I can get some tags made. You’ll see what I mean when you meet your lab roomba for the first time. Astonishingly successful implementation of a crazy idea: in completely unrelated news, Peter Parker has won “intern of the week”. Offer him your congratulations if you pass him in the corridor. He’s the kid. _

_ The roombas now require feeding once a day - they seem to appreciate pencil shavings and sandwich crumbs most, but are happy with anything more substantial than the usual dust. If you forget to feed it, you will quickly find out why the memo has been sent. _

_ Good luck. _

_ AH _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I once had an internet friend who claimed to have used a roomba as a starting point for a robot pet. Amongst other things, the roomba 'owned' a hockey puck that was kept next to the charging station. If the hockey puck was moved out of the area it belonged to, the roomba would stop whatever it was doing and wander around the house trying to locate the hockey puck. When it managed to do so, it would push the hockey puck back to the area it belonged in. In essence... playing fetch.
> 
> This said, all stories that come from friends on the internet must be taken with a pinch of salt, no matter how amusing.
> 
> The same guy also had a story about his husky... which became so enamoured with his treadmill that he had to lock it out of the room whenever he wanted to use it himself. This sounds similarly ridiculous, but it turns out that huskies are, in fact, willing to run on treadmills. So maybe both stories are true?
> 
> I certainly want to believe it: if you can teach a husky to use a treadmill, you can probably program a robot that started as a roomba to play fetch.


	2. Phillip Clatterbick, Stark Medical

Stark Medical was a new thing. Everyone knew it was because Colonel James Rhodes fell from the sky, lost two legs, broke his back, and sustained life-threatening injuries. Rumour had it - and everyone in the Stark Medical division loved their gossip - that Tony Stark had walked into the hospital in Germany, taken one look at the machines and rang Helen right then and there, on the spot, to get her to take her revolutionary medical technology mainstream.

And everyone in medical loved Dr Cho. She was, for all her oddities, a renowned genius in the field. Who didn’t want to work with the head scientist of the world-changing U-GIN project known as “The Cradle”? Everyone knew the rumour about Ultron, but they were New Yorkers. It was pretty much a given that any world-changing technology was going to spawn at least one supervillain at some point. That was what Iron Man was for: dealing with it.

  
Medical had a running theory that Iron Man only existed because Tony Stark realised that developing weapons meant he was going to end up as a supervillain someday and decided to take control of his PR before it got out of hand.

They weren’t quite sure where the Avengers fit into this, but then… neither were the Avengers, it seemed. Wherever they’d fucked off to.

Still, Medical might be new, but with the siren call of Helen Cho there to lure the imaginative away from their droll laboratories and into the new-smell-new-look chrome laboratories on the sixty-second floor, there was no doubt that they were going to do something special.

Phillip Clatterbick felt like he might get fired.

Amongst the many contracts that Stark Industries had picked up was a request from the New York Hospital Trust to improve their triage care. Bandages, blood transfusions, temporary splints, paramedic kits, on-site diagnostics, ambulance technology. If someone might urgently need something to stop them from dying, then it was the job of Stark Medical to find out a way to improve it.

For the most part, everyone had managed. Lucy had found a novel way to redesign ambulances to make certain items more accessible. Guilio had decided to take it a step further and had redesigned the wheelbase of every ambulance in New York with a retrofittable stabiliser that increased patient comfort by an incalculable amount - though the FRIDAY mainframe insisted that it was 42%. Phillip suspected it was a nerd joke, and he’d always been bad at picking those up.

Their weekly recap had been going great until they got to him. Everyone on his team contributing. And then Helen - the glorious, fantastic Helen Cho - had lent forward and asked how his project was going.

He knew better than to leave it as an awkward silence and had ventured some nonsense about progress that he would be able to “better quantify by the end of the week” and she’d given him a dubious look and left it at that.

That was Monday.

Now it was Friday, and his project was looking woefully underprepared.

He had the general gist - bandage bindings took a long time, and were often hard to apply under certain conditions and in certain places. If patients were mobile? Even worse - the motion ruined everything. Therefore, his project was to find a better way to improve bindings.

He’d seen some general ideas for spray-on bandages floating out there. Some experimental ideas, some that even seemed to be working for the military. But nothing that was civilian friendly - nothing that would get FDA approval.

“FRIDAY, run simulation.”

So Phillip had gone back to the basics of science and shamelessly found someone else’s work to examine, imitate and improve on. At least, that was the idea. Unfortunately…

“I’m sorry Phillip, I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“This material is classified under the Sokovi-”

“Yeah, I get that, but Stark is the only guy working on the superhero tech shtick, and I’m at  _ Stark _ Medical. He might be behind on the paperwork, but that’s no reason to cut me off from his sciency juices.”

Phillip’s latest idea had been a brainwave after reading through the miscellaneous materials manifesto sent into Stark Industry by various subsidiaries that they had contracts for. New York Police Department demanding a materials analysis on spiderman webs?  _ Yoink _ .

A bit of materials analysis, a bit of chicanery, a patent license from whichever madman was hiding under the mask, and his project was sorted. Possibly. He hadn’t run the lab work yet. He was trying to work out how to synthesise this absolutely whacky compound and he had absolutely no idea where to get started, because FRIDAY refused to help him - gah!

He hadn’t expected for the webs to be some super-secret material covered under the Accords. Superhero shit was covered under the Accords, but for Spiderman’s stuff to be covered without the kid wonder being signed onto them? That suggested an unheard of level of involvement from the man upstairs.

He’d heard that there was an upgrade of some kind, he’d heard rumours that Stark had some input, but the web materials being classified? Not for use even under Stark Medical, under Tony Stark’s friendship-is-magic-if-your-friends-are-billionaires shiny new department with the fancy department head? He just hoped that Helen Cho would be able to sort it out.

By which Phillip meant: “scream at Tony Stark until he finished sorting out his paperwork.” 

It was pretty much the same thing when it came to interdepartmental politics.

“Dr Helen Cho is arriving shortly for your scheduled meeting,” FRIDAY chipped in, “Would you like me to reschedule? You appear to enter some level of distress whenever this meeting is mentioned.”

“No, lets get it over with.” Phillip grimaced, “I’m blaming you for this okay.”

“You are trying to access confidential data.” FRIDAY almost sounded annoyed, though Phillip knew that was ridiculous - a computer with emotions? Not even Stark. The voice in the ceiling continued, “Stark Industries would be in breach of multiple international treaties if I permitted you to continue this line of inquiry.”

“Reverse engineering a substance does not constitute breaking an internationa-”

The door swung open, and Helen Cho’s cultured tones cut in, “I hope you’re not arguing with FRIDAY. She generally knows what she’s talking about.”

“It's making a mistake.” Phillip knew that he was unreasonably angry about this, but hey, here was the person that could probably sort things out. He paced back and forth as his voice rose, “All I want to do is reverse engineer the spiderwebs. I know we’ve done the preliminary analysis because that was our contract with NYPD. I know we’ve even done synthesis, because everyone knows Spider-thing has been swinging from building to building with a branded suit. This would just be a new application of the same technology we’re already providing to superheroes!”

“I see.” Helen Cho sighed, and sat down. “Have a seat Phillip.”

“What?”

“Have a seat,” She gestured to his normal position in the lab as she swiped quickly through her tablet, “This is going to be a long conversation. You should be comfy.”

“Are you firing me?” He frowned, “I would have made much more progress if FRIDAY had been willing to wo-”

“We’re not firing you.” Helen smiled, “Your work has generally been excellent, and the lack of progress in this particular instance is perhaps due to some misunderstandings you have about the relationship between the Avengers, Stark Industries and - in particular - the patents you want to have access to for this research project.”

“What do you mean?” His hammering heart slowly subsided as he sat down, realising that Dr Cho had at least some of the answers he’d be trying to coax out of the mainframe. “Why can’t I have access to one of Stark’s materials?”

“Frankly?” Helen raised an eyebrow, “It doesn’t belong to Tony Stark at all. The patent is owned by an entirely different person.”

“I thought he provided all of the Avengers with technology.”

“Broadly speaking, that’s true. But Spider-man isn’t an Avenger, nor does Tony Stark own all the patents for all the technology used by the Avengers.” Helen pulled up a file from the confidential database and pushed it over the table, “Spider-man is actually an independent actor which Tony Stark is supplying with technology for the purposes of protection and oversight. In return, Spider-man is, on occasion, co-opted into Avengers operations under the direct supervision of Tony Stark. In essence, the suit is payment services rendered. All maintenance and consumables are the responsibility of Spider-man, not Stark Industries.”

“But the webs. They’re part of the suit. Aren’t they?”

“Not quite. One of our interns does work closely on developing upgrades to the suit to ensure operational suitability for any Avenger-level threats. They are the only employee permitted to experiment with the web-fluid that you are seeking access to.”

“But this is for  _ Medical _ .” Phillip gestured vaguely around them, “Of all the places to have permission to push the boundary a bit, surely this is it?”

“We don’t own the patent.” Helen swiped through her tablet again for a second, before putting it down. “The ownership of the patent is, of course, highly confidential also. The Soko-”

“Sokovia Accords, right.” Phillip collapsed into his hands. “So I need to carry on examining different materials then?”

“Strictly speaking, yes.” Helen paused, “But there is perhaps another option.”

Phillip’s eyes lit up, “What’s that?”

“As I said, one of our interns does have permission to use the web-fluid for Stark Industries research,” Helen smirked, “I happen to know that he’s very talented, and very enthusiastic. He normally works directly with Tony Stark, but perhaps he could be convinced to spend a day or two working with you.”

“Why are you smiling like that?”

“It’s just…” Helen’s smirk transformed into something positively evil, “How do you feel about working with teenagers?”

Oh God.

  
  


_ Stark Medical Slack Chat _

_ HC: Spoke to Tony about Peter. He agreed to come next Friday at 4pm. His internship officially runs till 8pm. He’ll have some web-fluid with him. _

_ PC: Still can’t believe I have to work with a kid for this. Why did Stark Industries hire him anyway? _

_ HC: You’ll find out. Treat him well. _

_ LP: You’re working with kid intern? Fml, should have done your project. Jealous. _

_ PC: ? _

_ LP: He started the “not a robot apocalypse” roomba uprising _

_ PC: I don’t have a roomba. _

_ LP: lololololol _

_ GH: Lucy, you gonna explain that? You know that most of us don’t have Roomba’s down here. _

_ LP: Kid ‘accidentally’ reprogrammed all the tower roombas. They need daily “feeding” now or they attack you. Dr Hertberger signed off on it and everything. _

_ GH: Wow _

_ PC: you joking? _

_ GH: just wow. _

_ LP: They play fetch too. _

_ TT: confirmed. kid is hilarious. _

_ TT: bit awkward though. _

_ TT: treat him like a very small adult who is worryingly good at random shit _

_ TT: that’s basically how the boss man treats him and seems to work _

_ LP: Yeah, Stark is nuts about the kid _

_ LP: Personal intern apparently. _

_ PC: ??! _

_ LP: HR Harry got dragged into organising some training for Lab 001 _

_ PC: That’s stark’s lab tho. I thought HR couldn’t make him do anything. _

_ LP: HRH says Boss lady said it would be good for them to ‘have some bonding time’ _

_ PC: huh _

_ PC: can’t say I’d bond over HR training _

_ PC: kid is here, cya all monday _

_ LP: cya _

_ TT: doing tuesday-sat next week. Email those files to me on monday @GH _

_ GH: sure thing.  _

_ [TT is offline] _

_ GH: signing off too - don’t break the kid @PC _

_ [GH is offline] _

_ PC: Kid just explained biochemistry to me. Where was he when I was at uni? _

_   
_ _ HC: You don’t want to know _

_   
_ _ HC: Seriously, Peter is fourteen. _

_ HC: See you all on Monday. 10am meeting as usual. _

_   
_ _ [HC is offline] _ _   
  
_

_ PC: Kid is memeing. Whilst doing science. I’m concerned and impressed. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ LP: lol _ _   
_ _   
_ __ LP: I’m out too. Have fun with the kid.

_ [LP is offline] _

_ PC: THE BOSS MAN SHOWED UP TO SAY HI _

_ PC: BOSS MAN TOTALLY KNOWS THE KID. DIDN’T EVEN BELIEVE IT WHEN YOU SAID IT. _

_ PC: SHIT _

_ PC: FRIDAY KNOWS THE KID TOO _

_ PC: WHO THE FUCK IS THIS KID _

_ [PC is offline] _

_ [....] _

_ PC: Kid solved all my problems. @HC - can you arrange another couple of days with him? _

_ HC: No _

_ PC: Just one day? _

_ HC: Maybe _

_ PC: ...a saturday morning? I’ll come in whenever.  _

_ HC: Tony says he’ll talk to Peter about it _

_ PC: :) :) :) _


End file.
